Growing Old? Just Growing and Older?
by Linda McNamar
"Growing older does not have to be about growing old. With intention and appreciation for the aging process we can all age feeling satisfied with our lives.
We all have the ability to transform our aging process into a journey of wisdom and vitality while we become older. The ultimate goal for people who are aging consciously is allowing the wisdom of our experience to guide us as we express who we are in new ways, and to remain a contributing part of the world around us.
Each of us must assume greater responsibility for our own process, claiming for ourselves what fits us and inspires us to greater well-being. We need to be aware of the stereotypical beliefs that pervade our thinking and then examine each one for its accuracy in modern times.
Rather than waste our time trying to be younger, let's enhance it by exploring the richness of our longevity, without comparing it to any other age group, including our own, or any previous generation as they have experienced it. To do this takes knowing ourselves, our level of well being, our interests, our commitments and our abilities. It is never too late to build a healthy lifestyle.
To begin to nurture your own spirit, start by trying something new today, perhaps right now!
If you are reading this late at night and it seems too late to be creative, think again! What if you just got into bed from a different side than usual? Or crawled in from the bottom? What if you sang yourself to sleep? What if you slept with your head at the foot of your bed, or took your blanket and camped out under the dining room table? There is no end to the newness we can create in our lives as we expand the boundaries of our thinking.
Linda McNamar
Fitness Heaven
"The only secret of attaining happiness therefore, is to learn how to appreciate our privileges in life. If we cultivate that sense of appreciation we shall be thankful, we shall be contented and every moment we shall offer our thanks to God, for His gifts are many and enormous. When we do not see them it is because our wants cover our eyes from seeing all with which we are blessed by Providence. No meditation, no study, nothing can help in that direction. Except one thing: and that is to keep our eyes open to appreciate every little privilege in life, to admire every glimpse of beauty that comes before us, being thankful for every little love, kindness or affection shown to us by young or old, rich or poor, wise or foolish. In this way, continually developing the faculty of appreciating life and devoting it to thanksgiving, we arrive at a bliss which no words can explain, a bliss which is beyond imagination: the bliss that we find ourselves having already entered the kingdom of God."
(Hazrat Inayat Khan)
"Our happiness and unhappiness depend upon one thing: how we look at life, whether we appreciate and value all we have or depreciate and underestimate all we have. If we think of what we have not in life, we shall find that there is so much that we have not got, and it will then seem that what we have got is not even as big as a bubble in a vast sea. And if we try to realize what we have, there also will come a time when we shall see that what we have not is like a little bubble in a vast sea. It is a matter of looking at it. The general tendency is to see what we have not got in life, and rarely a soul is so blessed that he is awakened to appreciate all he has in life and to be thankful for it.
When we think of what we lack, there comes a flood of that lack and it drowns the whole universe. We find ourselves entirely lacking everything that it is possible to have. If we begin to realize what we have, it will be increased and be completed by abundance, so that in the end of our realization we shall be able to find that, really speaking, we have all. It is in this that lies the secret of spiritual attainment. The saying of Christ, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you," has the same meaning. When by our thankfulness, by our appreciation of life we arrive at the fullness of life, in that bliss we shall find the kingdom of God, and once the kingdom of God is realized, all else will be added."
(Hazrat Inayat Khan)
"The truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old, I'm a five-year-old, I'm a thirty-seven-year-old, I'm a fifty-year-old. I've been through all of them, and I know what it's like. I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own." (Morrie Schwartz: "Tuesdays With Morrie")
"You don't stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing." (Michael Pritchard)
"I am not interested in the past. I am interested in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life." (Charles F. Kettering)
"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know,
the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who
have sought and found how to serve." (Albert Schweitzer)
"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm." (Henry Thoreau)
"Growing Old Is Not For Sissies" (Title of a book, by Etta Clark)
"Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough." (Groucho Marx)
"To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old." (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." (Joseph Campbell)
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)
"There is nothing I like more than conversing with old persons; for I regard them as travelers who have gone on a journey which I too may have to go."
(Socrates)
"It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young." (Harry Emerson Fosdick)
"Growing older is mandatory, growing up is optional." (Author Unknown)
Being alive..
Someone to hold you too close
Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
And ruin your sleep
And make you aware of being alive
Someone to need you too much
Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell
And give you support for being alive -being alive
Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!
Somebody hold me too close
Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through
I'll always be there
As frightened as you of being alive,
Being alive, being alive!
Someone you have to let in
Someone whose feelings you spare
Someone who, like it or not
Will want you to share a little -a lot- of being alive
Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!
Somebody crowd me with love
Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through
I'll always be there
As frightened as you to help us survive,
Being alive, being alive, being alive, being alive
--from the musical, "Company"
Oft am I by the women told
"Poor Anacreon! Thou Grow'st old
Look! How thy hairs are falling all!"
Whether I grow old or no,
By the effects I do not Know;
But this I know, without being told,
"Tis time to live, if I grow old, "
Tis time short pleasures now to take.
Of little life the best to make,
and manage wisely the last stake.
Anacreon, 6th century B.C.
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